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Even Kopee Kaday is politicized

"What the government does is to steal this time for the government’s own purposes. It is no longer a government that serves the interest of the people but it is a people having to serve the interests of a government. The ruling party steals everything, including the short times people have for their entertainment."......................................

By Citizen Somapala

(February 10, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Where will Sri Lankans turn for some sort of entertainment in the TV or the radio? Those things no longer exist. Kopee Kaday used to be a light drama shown on ITN which has the largest broadcasting capacity in Sri Lanka. People gather in their homes and watch this teledrama to enjoy some light banter and to recollect some familiar sights from, particularly from the rural Sri Lanka.

However, the last episode of Kopee Kaday on 3rd February was a complete political propaganda piece meant to boost up the government and crudely attack the opposition regarding the last presidential elections. It was too crude even to be called a drama in any sense. Direct attacks, particularly on the opposition common candidate Sarath Fonseka, were made, and included attacks on other opposition members who were challenging the election.

The final message was to call hypocritically for reconciliation between political parties after making scathing attacks on the opposition all through the show. Such “dramas” make a mockery of the idea of reconciliation itself. It is meant mostly to fool the viewers themselves into some kind of false belief that there is a genuine attempt to get together, when what is really meant is to humiliate and to mock opponents.

After hard days of labor, people look for some types of entertainment before they rest and wake up the next day to go back to work again. These are the small intervals in which some families sit together, with children, elderly persons and the working adults, to have some kind of decent entertainment.

What the government does is to steal this time for the government’s own purposes. It is no longer a government that serves the interest of the people but it is a people having to serve the interests of a government. The ruling party steals everything, including the short times people have for their entertainment.

Under the pretext of ridiculing the opposition, what the political regime does is to attack the population itself, the attempt is to condition people’s minds to support the government’s point of view and to be a population indoctrinated all the time.

Besides this, the language used is crude, not suitable at all for family entertainment events. There is no rational discourse of any sort.

People are being treated as servants of a regime who are forced to listen to government propaganda whether they like it or not.

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The Sri Lanka Guardian is an online web portal founded in August 2007 by a group of concerned Sri Lankan citizens including journalists, activists, academics and retired civil servants. This portal is currently a platform for over hundred regular writers from around the world.